Filmstudy - Filmstudy is a sophisticated and comprehensive statistical analysis of the Ravens defense that incorporates a participation-by-play tracking system. This unique analysis is the brain child of the author and provides our readers with the real story behind the Ravens’ top end defensive results in the National Football League. Make Russellstreetreport.com the source for all of your Ravens football news and the forum to talk about what the Ravens fans want to hear most.

Lombardi’s Way - A column from the 24×7 founder that focuses on the Ravens, the NFL, Baltimore, the world of sports or life’s inspirations.

Battle Plans - During the season, you can expect to find thoughtful analysis in each of our Game Previews. We bring out the chalk and then talk X’s and O’s. In the offseason, Dev Panchwagh — The Scientist, digs beneath the surface and serves up insightful commentary on issues facing the Ravens and the NFL. School is in session!

With the draft just days away, I’d like to welcome you to April Madness, a look back at drafts of yesteryear.

I’ve collaborated with esteemed bracketologist Boh Lunardi, Baltimore’s answer to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, to bring you a tournament that pits Ozzie’s 64 greatest late round picks and undrafted signings against each other to decide who is the finest example of the depth of Oz’s draft wizardry. By late round pick, we mean anyone taken in rounds 4 through 7, but it’s worth noting no one from round 7 made the tourney, though a couple, as you’ll see, were on the bubble.

After selecting who we believed to be the top 64 players that met these criteria, we had to think up a way to determine seeding. At first, we went with personal opinion of who had the best career – that produced 0 upsets. Then, we invented this formula:

4. NCAA tournament results = how successful each late round pick/undrafted signing was as a Raven

It’s important to note that last part of #4. We are not using the player’s entire career as a gauge of who wins and loses in the tournament. Each matchup is decided solely by how that player performed while they were a Raven. Case in point: Priest Holmes’ Kansas City magic will not count in this bracket.

Now, if we’re using the player’s college career to determine their seed, how can we tell what the Ravens thought of him coming out of college? Well, we ordered all the drafted guys based on where they were picked. It’s our best gauge of what the team thought of them coming into the league, or, in this case, coming into the tournament.

Here’s an example:

Roderick Green

5.21

David Reed

5.25

Art Jones

5.26

Chykie Brown

5.33

The first number is the round of selection, the decimal number is the pick within that round that the player was selected.

For the undrafted players, we employed a secret formula that incorporated a little bit of Mel Kiper’s pre-draft grades, alphabetical order, and Boh’s and my opinions.

In all, here’s how the tournament breaks down:

4th round selections – 13

5th round selections – 14

6th round selections – 15

7th round selections – 0

Undrafted signings – 22

Leaving out the 7th round under-representation, we have a pretty even spread of guys across the potential field of qualifiers. And one final note, if any of you take the time to fact-check our methodology, Boh and I took the liberty of tweaking the seeds just once when it came to setting up exciting matchups.

Once the rankings were set, we s-curved the guys into regions (if you don’t know s-curves, just think of how your fantasy draft snakes round-by-round and you’ve got it). Each region has been named after a failed quarterback of the past to keep things organized. One last thing before we unveil the bracket…

Bubble Bursting

It wasn’t easy picking all of the 64 who made the tourney. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the guys who were on the bubble but missed the cut:

1. Davon Drew

2009 draft: Round 5 Pick 13 (149 overall)

2. Trent Smith

2003 draft: Round 7 Pick 9 (223 overall)

3. Quinn Sypniewski

2006 draft: Round 5 Pick 34 (166 overall)

Sorry to all three of you, but the battle of the failed backup tight ends had to be set up for the NIT to boost its ratings.

Boh’s take: “We wanted to have Davon Drew, but the only stat he racked up was most times cut and re-signed. And Trent Smith, wasn’t that the guy who caught that 44-yard bomb and broke his leg on the field?”

4. Anthony Poindexter

1997 draft: Round 7 Pick 10 (216 overall)

The funniest last name in Ravens’ history was enough to make the cut.

5. Ryan Sutter

1998 draft: Round 5 Pick 10 (133 overall)

If only this bracket were determined by your performance on The Bachelorette…

6. Yamon Figurs

2007 draft: Round 3 Pick 10 (74 overall)

If only you’d been drafted one round later, we might’ve had a dream matchup of failed return men. BJ Sams, Lamont Brightful, and Yamon Figurs – glad we didn’t have to make any matchup decisions regarding that trio.

The Bracket (click to enlarge)

Boh’s Regional Breakdowns

The Tony Banks Region

Probably the weakest of all the regions, the Banks regional has a weak 2 seed and a host of career backups (Cornell Brown, John Jones, Ronnie Prude, etc.) Look for a higher seed to come out of this region.

The Stoney Case Region

Any bracket that boasts Demetrius Williams as a #1 seed deserves to be named after Stoney Case. Aside from that though, this bracket is the Bracket of Death. With Tucker, AD, Demps, Marques Douglas, Priest Holmes, and Chester Taylor all in the same region, multiple Final 4 Candidates will go out too early. Quality players like Le’Ron, Pitta, and Madden Legend Clarence Moore all could be sent home early wishing they had been invited to the NIT version of this bracket (Davon Drew eeked out close one vs. Anthony Allen for that title).

Matchups to watch:

4. Le’Ron McClain vs. 13. Marques Douglas – Call me crazy, but this has upset written all over it.

This region comes down to 2 players: JJ and Bart Scott. Mulitalo probably sneaks out of the bottom half into the Elite 8, but either JJ or Bart will be cutting down the nets of this region.

Matchups to watch:

6. Chykie Brown vs. 11. Gerome Sapp – This matchup features the automatic qualifiers from the Special Teams Cornerback Conference and the Special Teams Safety Conference (Bennie Thompson is somewhere smiling).

The region with an awkward lefty white guy as its #1 seed is fittingly named after Scott Mitchell.

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About David Hallman

David Hallman is the self-proclaimed Purple Prophet. After years of mediocre predictions coming true, he told his parents his greatest prophecy on the drive to the airport to leave for Thailand in July 2012: “The only year I live overseas, the Orioles will make the playoffs, and the Ravens will win the Super Bowl.” We all know how that story ended: sleepless nights watching games thanks to the time difference and an office of foreign co-workers who refused to talk to him the day after he called out “sick” to watch the Super Bowl. He graduated from Calvert Hall in ’08 and Towson University in ’12 with a degree in English. More from David Hallman

Filmstudy - Filmstudy is a sophisticated and comprehensive statistical analysis of the Ravens defense that incorporates a participation-by-play tracking system. This unique analysis is the brain child of the author and provides our readers with the real story behind the Ravens’ top end defensive results in the National Football League. Make Russellstreetreport.com the source for all of your Ravens football news and the forum to talk about what the Ravens fans want to hear most.

Lombardi’s Way - A column from the 24×7 founder that focuses on the Ravens, the NFL, Baltimore, the world of sports or life’s inspirations.

Battle Plans - During the season, you can expect to find thoughtful analysis in each of our Game Previews. We bring out the chalk and then talk X’s and O’s. In the offseason, Dev Panchwagh — The Scientist, digs beneath the surface and serves up insightful commentary on issues facing the Ravens and the NFL. School is in session!